


Superpowers

by websandwhiskers



Series: The Proper Care and Feeding of Indefinable Things [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Darcy & Natasha friendship, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Movie Spoilers, Multi, Post-Movie, Snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-08
Updated: 2012-05-08
Packaged: 2017-11-05 01:26:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/400392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/websandwhiskers/pseuds/websandwhiskers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy watches. It's kinda what she's being paid for. More or less. That and the coffee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Superpowers

Despite her current work situation, there are few people in the world who know less about science than Darcy Lewis.

Natasha Romanov, however, is one of them.

Not that Darcy's going to say this out loud any time soon, but Natasha is . . . well, basically, a jock. In that weirdly philosophical way that smart jocks sometimes are, where like, football is Zen or something. If you read “football” as “killing people” and “Zen” as . . . whatever. Also she's good with computers. If she hadn't gone to the Brainwashing Academy for Assassins or been grown in a test tube until the age of puberty or however it was that she was produced that surely did not involve high school, she would have been the class-president type. Not so much charismatic as just plain never, ever off her game – in perfect control of herself and everything around her, such that she'd have either grown up to be a bajillionaire CEO or a politician or have hung herself in her closet sometime around sophomore year of college.

Darcy's not sure how that all translates into the life of a reformed Bond villain, but she's a hundred and twelve percent certain that she's right about all of it, because this is her superpower.

Okay, maybe it's not a superpower, but Darcy's really good at reading people – also, at seeing patterns. This is how she ended up playing PA to not only Jane, but also Dr. Banner and, on occasion, _Tony freakin' Stark_. She doesn't really know a proton from a protein, it took her about three weeks working for Jane to figure out that it wasn't “rosenbridge” but Einstein, Rosen, bridge, three words despite how Jane pronounces them, and she takes a certain sick joy in declaring all Tony's gadgets “shiny” in her best unimpressed voice (even if the unreleased and unnamed device that has replaced her iPod is pretty sweet.) 

But she's picked up someone's half-finished graph and unintelligible notes and declared, “Hey, does this kinda look like it matches?” or some variant thereof three times so far, and produced squealing at decibels that were, in her opinion, really unnecessary. 

Especially from Tony.

That, and she makes the world's best coffee, collates data like a boss, and isn't afraid to tell people when they need to eat before they pass out. Or bathe, before she passes out. She hopes this job comes with a good retirement package, because this skill set is so not going to translate on a resum é .

Coulson (did anyone  _really,_ for more than five minutes, think he was actually dead? Hello to the obvious manipulation and thank you Dr. Pavlov, do these people really not realize how obvious their buttons are?) has kinda taken her under his wing, a little, she thinks – or at least he comes by and stares at her periodically, and occasionally even gives her an approving nod. And randomly informs her that she's attending seminars on things like multicultural integration in the work-place and experimental firearms. As previously established, Darcy is not stupid when it comes to seeing patterns, and she's well aware she's being groomed for . . . something? 

If she liked certainty and order in her life, she'd have taken a sane internship at least vaguely related to her major and never have gotten into any of this. Probably she'd be working at Starbucks. 

Instead she's surreptitiously watching Natasha doing her I-am-walking-on-a-high-wire-none-of-the-rest-of-you-can-see walk around the lab, mostly not-touching the equipment while she not-looks at it in obvious non-interest - because she is not a physicist or a molecular biologist or a Tony, and thus really has no reason to be there. Being Natasha, she's completely aware that Darcy's watching her – and seems amused by it. At least, that's how Darcy's reading her complete lack of a reaction. 

Every few minutes she offers some extremely detailed but context-less story out of her last mission, which was apparently in South-East Asia. Bruce chuckles distractedly and/or expresses his own frustration with the political climate and living conditions as is appropriate, sometimes throwing in an experience of his own (less clinically precise, but more colorful). Then Jane – who had been glaring and pointedly ignoring her, because she was INTERRUPTING THE SCIENCE – finally gives in and goes off on one of her scarily vitriolic neo-liberal rants about global politics and white, Western privilege. 

Natasha seems to find this somewhere between comical and horrifying.

Which is to say, she blinks.

And then, of course, Tony walks in and asks if Jane would like to give that impassioned speech again only with fewer clothes on and maybe some pom-poms, and Natasha threatens to kill him creatively, and Bruce sighs. Bruce sighs a lot, really – it's kinda his thing. And then he's trying to distract Natasha with another story because there's this glitch in Bruce's brain where he can't so much tell real anger from hard-edged teasing and he's developed an over-compensatory need to make sure no one ELSE is ever angry, either. 

Natasha lets herself be distracted, or at least humors him. Then she makes another circuit of the room and stares at some piece of Jane's equipment that neither she nor Darcy really understands, for a while, and then starts talking about roasting grubs.

To which Tony says, eloquently, “Ew.”

“They're actually not bad,” Bruce interjects in his very mildest voice, sharing a conspiratorial look with Natasha behind Tony's back. Natasha comes as close to smiling as she ever does when she's not about to kill something. Darcy's not sure if that means that roasted grubs are totally ew, that Tony is going to find himself accidentally eating some sometime soon, or both. 

This has been happening, with subtle variations in content but remarkable consistency of theme, for about three months now. It seems to have become Natasha's post-mission routine. Given that Darcy had previously assumed she went off duty and plugged into the wall and stared at same wall until she was needed again, it's . . . intriguing. Voluntary seeking of human companionship; who would have guessed? 

Of course this means something has Natasha thrown, which is probably bad. Not that they don't all have good reason to be gibbering in their respective corners, really, but . . . Natasha. See above re: plugs into a wall. 

So Darcy watches. It's kinda what she's being paid for. More or less. That and the coffee. 

***

Six weeks into her self-assigned assignment of Natasha-evaluation, Bruce proves himself at least moderately aware of the world around him.

Natasha leaves, having exhausted the non-classified and yet interesting aspectsof her assignment, given Bruce a smile, and mentioned that they should all check out some Thai place. Bruce's eyes slide from her retreating back to Darcy's shrewd, calculating expression. 

He sighs. He really does that a  _lot._

“No, Darcy,” says Bruce, once the door is firmly closed and Natasha is definitely out of ear-shot.

“What?” Darcy asks, all innocence.

“No, there is nothing going on between Agent Romanov and I.”

“Did I say there was?” Darcy asks.

Bruce gives her a very speaking look.

“Okay.” Darcy holds up both hands. “Whatever you say, dude.”

“What?” says Jane, face appearing over the top of her monitor, looking as if she's just remembered that other sentient beings actually exist on _this_ planet.

“Bruce needs some help observing his data,” Darcy tells her, to which Bruce sighs, again, loudly.

Jane frowns at this, seeming to realize there's something off about the conversation, but all she says is, “Okay, that's fine, but – would you mind making a pot of coffee first? Please?”

***

Natasha comes back from missions at least a little bit beat up most of the time; they all do. Avenger-dom is not a low-impact sport. What Natasha does – somewhere on the edge of what she was and what they're all turning into, half spy and half ambassador and half walking Deus Ex Machina, which is three halves, and yes, Darcy means it that way – is even riskier. They all have memorable faces, but her is remembered by the wrong people for the wrong reasons.

So when Darcy looks around and says, “Where's Bruce?”

And Tony replies with, “Nat's in the hospital. Bruce is meditating. A lot. On a raft in the middle of the Hudson. Just in case, y'know.”

Darcy's reponse is, “Huh?”

Because if Bruce hulked out every time Natasha got hurt, she'd be buying stock in stretchy pants.

But now that Darcy's watching him, Tony is . . . sketching rather viciously. On paper. Paper sketches pretty much only happen because Tony wants to beat something up, but he's developed a modicum of responsibility when it comes to misuse of the suit, and punching things with your actual fists hurts. So he beats up paper. Or sometimes Happy. There's a boxing ring on the 3rd floor, and those YouTube videos are not Darcy's fault.

(Really, they're not, she likes her job, and also if anybody hacked the security cameras it was probably Tony himself.)

But right now, he's beating the crap out of a poor unsuspecting piece of newsprint – spread out on top of a surface that was a giant touchscreen panel probably worth multiples of Darcy's yearly salary, and probably full of scratches now – which means he doesn't trust himself to hit a person and hurt neither them nor himself.

Well, shit.

Jane's not around, but that's nothing unusual – it's before noon. Jane doesn't really do being diurnal.

“How bad?” Darcy asks.

“Not bad.” Slash, scrape, screech goes the pencil. “Cracked ribs. Couple teeth. Missing. She lost some teeth.”

“Teeth?”

“Teeth, those things you chew with?”

“I know what teeth are. She got hit in the face?”

“Not so much, no. Well, probably yes. But no.”

There's a pause.

“There were apparently pliers involved.”

“Shit,” Darcy breathes aloud.

“Pretty much. They're dead, if you're wondering.”

“How -”

“Drugs, or – possibly a supersonic device. Incapacitation, obviously. They didn't wait for her to wake up for most of it, apparently, knew better, which I suppose is . .. better.”

The pencil goes flying across the room. Tony's head goes into his hands, fingers splayed through his hair. “Is this supposed to be team-building?” he asks the torn paper and ruined touchscreen. “This thing where I'm having post-traumatic stress on someone else's behalf, is this part of that whole 'team' thing? Because, if so, it sucks, and I did not volunteer for this.”

***

“So how many teeth are they missing?” Darcy asks, plopping down at Natasha's bedside.

“Collectively or individually?” she mumbles; her jaw is still pretty swollen.

“Gimme whatever sounds more impressive,” Darcy suggests.

“One hundred fifty-two.”

“And you're missing . . ?”

“Five.”

“Damn. Talk about a rout.”

Natasha actually smiles at that, puffy jaw and all, and snorts, and gives Darcy this look of you-are-totally-ridiculous-and-I-kinda-love-you-for-it. And Darcy feels a little bad for having ever thought she plugged into a wall.

“Go get Bruce out of the river, will you?” Natasha asks.

“I thought you liked me,” Darcy protests.

Natasha reaches an arm out over the railing at the side of the bed and pats Darcy's hand.

“See if I bring you chocolate again,” Darcy grumbles.

“I can't chew,” Natasha reminds her.

“Which is why it's chocolate syrup. Or maybe body paint. I dunno, it comes in a pretty jar – which I will even kindly open for you – and the label's French. I don't speak French. I took Mandarin in college.”

“You brought me chocolate body paint,” Natasha repeats.

“It's gourmet body paint from Whole Foods. I tried some, it's good. Not syrupy crap, it's all dark and bitter.”

“Whole Foods does not carry body paint.”

“Then I guess it's just syrup. Oh well.”

“If you make me laugh, I will hurt you,” says the woman on the bed with the broken ribs and the face that looks like a lumpy tomato, and Darcy totally believes her.

Darcy isn't entirely sure when exactly they bonded like this; probably all that time that Natasha spent in the lab not flirting with Bruce and, come to think of it, not talking to Darcy, and yet, being in both of their space. She brought down Greek take-out once. Those were some world-class stuffed grape leaves, too. Huh.

Darcy is apparently excellent at reading people when she is not directly involved; when she is, it seems she can make a friend without even knowing it. Which is . . sort of a skill?

“Stop thinking so loudly, you're making my head hurt,” Natasha protests.

***

Darcy does not actually attempt to go retrieve Bruce – she doesn't think Natasha really wanted her to anyway, because that'd be kinda a little bit _insane._

Within a week Natasha is out of the hospital and theoretically on leave from field work – which means she's bored, which means New York has a lot less organized crime at the end of the week after that. Fury is not amused. Except for how he totally is.

Then Jane makes some monumental discovery that is not a functional Bifrost but is apparently an important step toward one, which requires drinking and celebration. Though that may be more because Erik finally agreed to come see her work, and less because of the dubiously-quantifiable scientific progress.

Regardless, it ends in all of them more or less taking over Tony's penthouse and getting spectacularly shit-faced. Not Steve; Steve just gets increasingly red in the face, especially when drunk!Jane corners him and starts asking about his political stance on assorted civil rights issues. She's obviously out for blood – Darcy wonders if her boss would take it amiss if she bought her a giant vibrator and wrote “Thor” on it in red sharpie – and Steve is just as obviously trying to avoid getting into a debate, because apparently you didn't talk sex or politics or the combination thereof over after-dinner drinks in the forties.

(Though Darcy kinda suspects people did, and it's more that Steve has never been to a ritzy house party as _Steve_ before, rather than Captain America, and with no idea how to act and bereft of the ability to acquire some liquid courage, is just falling back on a the painful properness that is his default setting.)

Anyway, Pepper rescues him and Clint steers Jane toward the bar where he and Tony are apparently going to do some sort of science-experiment shot. Tony and Jane, of course, are imbibing unstable chemical reactions _for science._ Clint is doing it because he's batshit crazy. The line between those two things tends to get blurry in this group.

“You're off the clock, you know,” Bruce says, at Darcy's shoulder.

“What?” Darcy demands.

“Stop analyzing everyone. Drink. Relax.”

“Says the man who's been nursing one drink for the last three hours.”

“Mellow is good. Out of control -”

Clint gags, Jane whoops like a sorority girl, and Tony makes that googly-eyed 'what a rush' face that Darcy is really, really trying not to think of as his orgasm face, because sooner or later she's going to say it out loud. Also, he makes that face at equations, sometimes.

“- is bad,” Bruce concludes wryly.

“Fair point,” Darcy allows.

“No one is dancing,” Natasha announces, striding over to Bruce and Darcy with a look of purpose on her face. “I want to dance.”

The speakers are blaring AC/DC.

“I'm not sure you can dance to this,” Bruce says.

Natasha quirks a brow at him.

Darcy plucks his drink from his hand. “Stop analyzing. Relax. Have fun.”

. . . and if that starts something that eventually ends in the death of a wall and Tony passing out with his head in Steve's lap (with a totally complacent Pepper curled up asleep at the other end of the couch, his feet on her knees), Darcy cannot be blamed. Darcy just took alcoholic beverages away from the guy who turns into a giant rage monster if he loses control. It was completely responsible behavior.

***

The next morning Darcy stumbles into the kitchen to find Bruce and Natasha at the table, the air redolent of _things that aren't coffee,_ which Darcy thinks is a sufficient atrocity to excuse her momentary lapse in judgment. As in, she sees them sitting at the table talking quietly over, gah, _herbal tea?_ Still dressed in last night's clothes and looking sort of wan and worn-thin but not nearly rumpled enough for there to have been sleeping – or anything else – having occurred.

And she doesn't retreat until Natasha says, “Sit down at this table and I will hamstring you and hang you from the chandelier.” In Mandarin. Darcy is oddly touched that she remembered, doped up as she'd been at the time of the conversation.

“I speak Chinese,” says Bruce, in English.

Natasha replies in Russian – Darcy understands not a word, but apparently Bruce understands and anyway, the tone says enough.

Bruce sighs. She's heard enough of his sighs that she thinks she speaks exhalation-of-Bruce pretty fluently by now. This one sounds . . . exasperated. Resigned.

Kinda affectionate.

Natasha pushes his hair off his forehead, fingers lingering faintly on the furrows in his brow, still speaking softly in her native tongue. Her face is possibly as human as Darcy has ever seen it, tired and open and _young,_ though Darcy knows she is way the hell older than she looks – like old enough to be Darcy's grandmother, older than she looks.

And it suddenly occurs to Darcy, as Bruce says something that makes Natasha smile, just a little, that maybe being the sort of person who gives the first impression of plugging into a wall at night, not even knowing if you were born of spawned in a test tube -

\- it suddenly clicks in Darcy's head, what started the after-mission routine. What had Natasha rattled. It wasn't Bruce, per se.

It was the Other Guy. Because Natasha has, _is,_ her own Other, without the convenient distinction of turning big and green and dissociative for the experience. And it must have been weird as fuck to meet someone else who'd get it.

Potentially.

If he'd get over himself long enough.

Bruce is pretty smart, but smart people, Darcy knows, can be forgetting-to-eat stupid.

. . . and people who think they're good at reading people can stand obliviously in a kitchen with two people trying to have a moment glaring daggers at them. Right.

“Going,” Darcy says, gives a hazy little salute (and is momentarily terrified that Steve will be standing behind her when she turns around, because that'd happen, that'd be her life – but he's not), and stumbles back up to her borrowed room.

Her room still doesn't contain coffee; Darcy thinks going back to sleep is the only sensible response to that.

***

Not-long-enough later, Jane bursts into her room shouting, “Get up, get up, I've got it, you've got to get up, we're going to lab right now I can't believe it took me this long to realize but I was laying awake last night and I was staring at the glass in the lamp shade? And -”

“Coffee,” Darcy says flatly. “Coffee, coffee, so much coffee. Then science.”

Jane sighs, exasperated, and stomps out of the room shouting, “Ten minutes or I'm dragging you!”

Which means Darcy's morning-or-possibly-afternoon-now pretty much sucks ass, right up until she's stumbling blearily down the hallway at the same time a door opens and there's Steve Rogers, shirt not even tucked in, kissing Pepper Potts goodbye. In the doorway. _Of a bedroom._

Darcy's first thought is that her entire life is about to go to utter, imploding, amazing levels of shit, because when Tony -

\- except then Tony's voice comes from inside the room. “This was fun!” Tony says. “Wasn't this fun? We should do this again. Team bonding. I feel bonded. Do you feel bonded, Pepper? I think this was bonding.”

“Yes, Tony,” Pepper says indulgently, sharing a bemused look with Steve, who blushes.

And then sees Darcy, standing there gaping.

And then turns redder than the reddest red thing that was ever red.

“This isn't – ah -” he begins.

“It's exactly what it looks like,” Pepper says, smiling sweetly. “And if I read about it in the tabloids, I'll know exactly who to blame, won't I?”

“Why is everyone threatening me today?” Darcy grumbles, stomping past a now purple Steve. “I just want coffee. I swear, that's all. Like, in life,” she's still muttering, even though she's way past them and now officially talking to herself. “Just coffee. Coffee and I will be happy together. We will have little espresso babies.”

***

And then they reinvent a Bifrost. It's pretty awesome.

Obviously Jane and Thor go off to Thor and Jane land and nobody wants to follow, which kinda leaves the rest of the science team (plus Natasha) staring at each other.

Because clearly this calls for a celebration.

There's more staring.

“What's everybody think of a nice dinner?” Bruce suggests.

***

Things get more complicated after that; turns out Jane didn't actually quite so much have permission to open the Bifrost, and then it turns out that no one can really agree on who would or wouldn't have had to give that permission, and then Jane is all like, fuck y'all and the horse you rode in on because _science, motherfuckers_ (and apparently having lots of the Thor-sex actually doesn't make her any less bloodthirsty, it just gives her a huge guy who can imply the possibility dire intergalactic diplomatic incidents on her behalf. By frowning.)

But apparently – um, duh – the military wanting to come in and claim the science is kinda a sore spot for Bruce.

He's the voice of unearthly Zen reason and calm and compromise and all things goodness and light right up until the moment he _isn't._ There's nothing like warning.

And Jane is screaming, “Oh my God, the equipment, get him away from the equipment!” (because of course this couldn't happen in a conference room)and Tony's saying, “What the fuck, what is she doing, get her out of there! What is she _doing_?” and Darcy – cowering very tinily in a corner with a couple of high-ranking military officials and a US Senator – initially thinks he's talking about Jane.

He's not. He's talking about Natasha.

Because she's standing on a desk, as close to eye-level as she can get with the Hulk, fucking _staring him down._

Darcy has seen stupid. This just officially beat drunken motorcycle chicken on the railroad tracks at 3am (thank you freshman year frat party). She wants desperately to _do something,_ but can't even begin to think of what.

“Stop this!” Natasha shouts.

Hulk roars back with enough force to whip her hair around her face – but, doesn't charge.

And Natasha screams.

This is not a scream of fear, or of anger, or of . .. human things. This is not a human scream. This is another language that the conscious portion of Darcy's brain doesn't speak, though the hairs on her arms do. Every pore in her body feels electrified at the sound, like she needs to go run and hide in a cave or, barring that, hunt something down in a pack and kill it with her teeth.

Hulk roars again. Natasha shrieks again, the sound tapering into a low, threatening snarl.

And then . .. the Hulk makes a sort of huffing sound. Natasha gives a forceful kind of snort, almost a grunt, and something about her posture changes.

Hulk sits.

Natasha sits, legs dangling off the desk.

Bruce's giant green embodiment-of-hindbrain puts his head down across her knees, chin tilted up so his throat is bared, and she leans over to kiss the underside of his chin. He snuffles again, and very, very carefully pets at her hair.

“Did she just go all Cesar Milan on the Hulk?” Tony whispers – loudly, of course Tony whispers loudly – from the other corner.

“Shut the fuck up, Tony,” says Jane, who is shaking, but still standing firm in front of her Bifrost machine.

Well. Darcy guesses everybody's got their priorities, their things they'd die for – a kindred soul. Science. Being a smart-ass. The usual.

***

That's pretty much when Natasha and Bruce end up officially a couple; Darcy's not sure how their sex life works, and is frankly terrified to ask, because Natasha would probably answer.

Anyway, she's shortly distracted, because Coulson finally deigns to inform her what she's been training for all this time.

“They respect you already,” he says. “You understand how important that is in a martial culture.”

“Yes I do,” Darcy agrees, a little faintly. Part of her wants to be protesting, because, OMG. OMFG. Oh-My-Fucking-God-With-Oh-My-Fucking-God-Sauce-and-A-Side-Of-Fuck-Me.

They want to make her the SHIELD liason to Asgard.

“This is a unique post,” Coulson tells her, “and you have a very unique skill-set. It's a good match.”

Unique skill-set. That's just another way to say superpowers, right? Right.

***


End file.
